The Cancellation of Jim Cornette

[Al]

1 hour ago, Log said:

One thing to keep in mind with OVW is that it is not technically an independent promotion.  It's first and foremost a wrestling school.  They just have a show attached to it.  I know that's not unusual, but I think you have to approach how you view it, quality-wise, a little differently.  I'm not trying to argue that those Cornette shows were actually great or anything.  I just think you have to grade on a curve.

That's really something that wrestling is missing these days. Not all small wrestling shows are worth watching. Some are quite bad. But inexperienced performers need a place to practice and sometimes fall on their faces. 

[TheDuke]

Right now in Canada I noticed I have a free preview of a channel called Game + which shows OVW Wrestling on Sunday mornings.  I find that funny that an Indie Developmental promotion is being shown on basic cable in Canada right now as part of this free preview. The only wrestler I recognized when I watched it was Jessie Godderz. I wonder if OVW is available in the US on a random cable channel. It would be funny if it could only be seen in the Louisville area in the US but was available nationwide in Canada.

[Blehschmidt]

1 hour ago, TheDuke said:

Right now in Canada I noticed I have a free preview of a channel called Game + which shows OVW Wrestling on Sunday mornings.  I find that funny that an Indie Developmental promotion is being shown on basic cable in Canada right now as part of this free preview. The only wrestler I recognized when I watched it was Jessie Godderz. I wonder if OVW is available in the US on a random cable channel. It would be funny if it could only be seen in the Louisville area in the US but was available nationwide in Canada.

I live in a state that borders Kentucky, and it has never been available here!

[Mad Dog]

My friend lives in Lexington, KY and he says OVW has never been on TV there. 

[El-P]

6 hours ago, Big Pete said:

I was just listening to his NWA Invasion shoot so I can tell you he was off creative before the December 11th 1997 taping. Jim being Jim explained in explicit detail how he remembered that date so I have no reason to doubt the intel.

I'll try to see if I can uncover his start date for you. I believe he mentioned it during his recap of the Michaels-Vader feud funnily enough.

According to Jim, the stop-start was Patterson but he thought it was a good idea for what they had originally planned to do before HBK sandbagged it.

Thanks !

Oh yeah, now that you mention it I heard it was Patterson indeed (I guess from the same Corny interview). No idea why they thought it was a good idea, it totally killed the pace.

[Mad Dog]

I think my problem with Cornette as a head booker is he doesn't have his own voice. I like OVW and SMW a lot. SMW is one of my favorite promotions. But he often comes across like a cover band trying to belt out all those Memphis and Mid-South hits he loved so much. 

[Beast]

36 minutes ago, El-P said:

Thanks !

Oh yeah, now that you mention it I heard it was Patterson indeed (I guess from the same Corny interview). No idea why they thought it was a good idea, it totally killed the pace.

Originally Vader was supposed to win the title at Survivor Series, leading to a rubber match at the Rumble where Shaw would win in front of his hometown crowd.

So the two non-title victories by Vader were supposed to keep him strong. Cornette's blamed the failure on Michaels for refusing to let Vader be Vader, laying out a match where Vader sold like any other Michaels opponent for the first section rather than being a monster, and their general lack of chemistry.

[Flyin' Brian]

4 hours ago, TheDuke said:

Right now in Canada I noticed I have a free preview of a channel called Game + which shows OVW Wrestling on Sunday mornings.  I find that funny that an Indie Developmental promotion is being shown on basic cable in Canada right now as part of this free preview. The only wrestler I recognized when I watched it was Jessie Godderz. I wonder if OVW is available in the US on a random cable channel. It would be funny if it could only be seen in the Louisville area in the US but was available nationwide in Canada.

They have a Roku channel. 

[El-P]

21 minutes ago, Mad Dog said:

SMW is one of my favorite promotions. But he often comes across like a cover band trying to belt out all those Memphis and Mid-South hits he loved so much. 

What's funny in hindsight with SMW (I also really enjoyed watching SMW TV, especially when Dutch Mantell was announcing, he was just the greatest) is that is was promoted as "pro-wrestling like it used to be". In 1993. Like it used-to-be. Cornette was already geared toward the past 25 years ago.

6 minutes ago, Beast said:

So the two non-title victories by Vader were supposed to keep him strong. Cornette's blamed the failure on Michaels for refusing to let Vader be Vader, laying out a match where Vader sold like any other Michaels opponent for the first section rather than being a monster, and their general lack of chemistry.

I thought the match layout sucked, it made Vader look like an idiot. Of course as far as pure in-ring working, Vader never could be Vader in WWF except when he met Shamrock, but that match booking with the interruptions was the pits. Micheals had a better match overall with fucking Sid.

[NintendoLogic]

For what it's worth, Cornette said in one of his FSM pieces that the idea for the restarts came from Vince himself.

https://www.jimcornette.com/fighting-spirit/memories-vader-fsm155

Also, Vader once said he was promised that if he did the job at Summerslam, he'd end up a two-time champ. According to him, he was supposed to win it from Shawn at some point, drop it to someone else, win it back, and then drop it to Shawn in San Antonio.

[Mad Dog]

1 hour ago, El-P said:

What's funny in hindsight with SMW (I also really enjoyed watching SMW TV, especially when Dutch Mantell was announcing, he was just the greatest) is that is was promoted as "pro-wrestling like it used to be". In 1993. Like it used-to-be. Cornette was already geared toward the past 25 years ago.

I thought the match layout sucked, it made Vader look like an idiot. Of course as far as pure in-ring working, Vader never could be Vader in WWF except when he met Shamrock, but that match booking with the interruptions was the pits. Micheals had a better match overall with fucking Sid.

In his defense. I think it was a smart play in early 90s to go that route with the audience he was catering to. I think a cutting edge counter culture product like ECW could only start in a couple of cities. And even then, ECW is just Memphis wrestling cranked up to 11.

[Loss]

The "wrestling isn't as good as it used to be" stuff took hold in a big way in 1984-1985 when Vince was changing wrestling, and again in 1989-1990 when the territories were dead and those changes had become entrenched. There was an audience for that in 1993, especially with wrestling in such a dark age everywhere at that point. Anyway, Cornette missed the first wave since he was in companies that were still cranking out great stuff, but was part of the second wave.

I became a fan in the mid-80s and REALLY became a fan in the late 80s, so I don't view those time periods that way, although when I watch the stuff that preceded it now, I get why longtime fans were disillusioned with some of the changes. Something gets lost each time there's major change, even if those changes are often for the better on the whole. 

[sek69]

19 minutes ago, Loss said:

I became a fan in the mid-80s and REALLY became a fan in the late 80s, so I don't view those time periods that way, although when I watch the stuff that preceded it now, I get why longtime fans were disillusioned with some of the changes. Something gets lost each time there's major change, even if those changes are often for the better on the whole. 

Sometimes I think we lose track of how Flair/Steamboat/Midnight Express matches must have looked to fans who grew up watching hour long Dory Jr matches.  There was a monumental leap from the 70s to the 80s that isn't that dissimilar to the changes from the 80s to the 90s/2000s. 

[MoS]

17 minutes ago, sek69 said:

Sometimes I think we lose track of how Flair/Steamboat/Midnight Express matches must have looked to fans who grew up watching hour long Dory Jr matches.  There was a monumental leap from the 70s to the 80s that isn't that dissimilar to the changes from the 80s to the 90s/2000s. 

To be fair, Harley had started the big bumping and high workrate main event style before Flair did; Flair was just much better at it. Plus, it also varied by territory; NorCal had Stevens and Patterson and while I haven't seen a lot of their 70s work, I am sure they worked like Flair/Steamboat/MX Express

[MoS]

Also, I know they did crossover angles and shit, but a combined SMW/ECW would have been an excellent third promotion in the 90s. Paul E and Corny booking the same show together would have led to something interesting, because I feel they would have complemented each other really well if they could have stopped themselves from killing each other. 

Speaking of, what do you guys think of Corny-booked OVW and Heyman-booked OVW? I think the Corny version is considered more critically acclaimed, but I might be wrong 

[Loss]

The even bigger change of the 80s was the emphasis on physique. Tommy Rich was probably the most popular babyface in America in 1981. By 1984, at the ripe age of 28, he was past his peak.

[Loss]

1 hour ago, MoS said:

Also, I know they did crossover angles and shit, but a combined SMW/ECW would have been an excellent third promotion in the 90s. Paul E and Corny booking the same show together would have led to something interesting, because I feel they would have complemented each other really well if they could have stopped themselves from killing each other. 

Speaking of, what do you guys think of Corny-booked OVW and Heyman-booked OVW? I think the Corny version is considered more critically acclaimed, but I might be wrong 

I am looking forward to the Heyman version when I get to it because anything is better than this.

[ButchReedMark]

I downloaded an OVW torrrent once. Best of from like 2000-02 or something. And the sound of the fucking bell being rang incessantly as someone did a run in to end seemingly every match and someone would run in for the save/there'd be a beatdown, and they'd keep ringing the bell and it drove me fucking mad.

[clintthecrippler]

19 hours ago, Loss said:

The "wrestling isn't as good as it used to be" stuff took hold in a big way in 1984-1985 when Vince was changing wrestling, and again in 1989-1990 when the territories were dead and those changes had become entrenched. There was an audience for that in 1993, especially with wrestling in such a dark age everywhere at that point. Anyway, Cornette missed the first wave since he was in companies that were still cranking out great stuff, but was part of the second wave.

I became a fan in the mid-80s and REALLY became a fan in the late 80s, so I don't view those time periods that way, although when I watch the stuff that preceded it now, I get why longtime fans were disillusioned with some of the changes. Something gets lost each time there's major change, even if those changes are often for the better on the whole. 

A reminder that there are still plenty of people that pine for the Attitude Era now and say it's not as good as it was then are holding onto an era of wrestling that ended 20 years ago this year (if you count Wrestlemania 17 as an end point, which a lot of people do). So Cornette doing an early '80s throwback in 1993 is actually way less further removed than the folks that still hold up the Monday Night Wars era as the last time wrestling was great.

[Mad Dog]

Yeah. I think it was a smart starting point for SMW. It gave him a following out of the gate and he had the right talents to get it off the ground. I think where he really went wrong is he needed to evolve and really lost touch with his fanbase. I think the fans turning on the Rock N Rolls for shaving Candido's head after losing the stip match shows where he had lost the plot.

[Loss]

The General Jim Cornette stuff at the end was pretty bad. I think he put himself over too much too. He didn't need to manage Al Snow and Unabomb when Snow was developing really well as a talker himself. 

[NintendoLogic]

He thought he could get away with not delivering on advertised stipulations when babyfaces came up on the short end because he figured the fans would be happy something bad didn't happen to them.

[Mad Dog]

That was generally accepted behavior and fans would pop for that back in the day but I think it showed the changing landscape and him already failing to cope by the mid 90s. 

[sek69]

Makes me wonder how much of SMW's successes were not so much in spite of Jim, but because of the talent they had there.  

[Mad Dog]

1 minute ago, sek69 said:

Makes me wonder how much of SMW's successes were not so much in spite of Jim, but because of the talent they had there.  

A lot. I love the TV but his booking is the absolute shits at time. Ron Wright, DWB, Fuller, Smothers, Armstrong and Dutch do a lot of heavy lifting and really cover for his fuck ups.